trick or treat by.peter
tue.oct.31

In Australia we’ve always regarded Halloween as some silly American tradition. Over here it seems to be a big deal among kids and adults alike. It’s an opportunity for little kids to have fun and for big kids to become little kids again. Our building got into the spirit and decked out the reception and foyer with Halloween themed props....

We were also encouraged to bring in treats so the children of Microsoft employees could go trick or treating down the office hallways. Many of the employees heeded the call and by the end of lunch, there were bowls and buckets of candy outside ready to ensnare the little monsters....

One by one they appeared at our doors with their high pitched ‘trick or treat!’, grabbing a handful of candy and then off they were to the next office. We had witches, super heroes, fairies and ghosts turn up. There was even one that was either a gameboy or a zune.

 

a touch of frost by.peter
tue.oct.31

The last few days have been extremely cold. Temperatures dropped to 30 degrees Fahrenheit - that’s -1 degrees Celsius! Luckily our condo has really good insulation so we haven’t felt the need to use our heating system yet. We headed out this morning to find a thick layer of frost on everything….

 

 

my first product release by.cristina
mon.oct.30

i never thought i'd end up working at a software company but here i am hehe. peter finds it quite amusing actually and so do i. i've been working alongside programmers to build our interactive tutorials and i'm learning a lot about the industry processes (bug fixing/finding, etc.) and the jargon (like "whack whack" for a double back slash hehe). tonight was the first release of a product since my arrival and wow - it was exhilirating and nerve-racking at the same time. everyone stayed around for it (8pm+), dinner was ordered and any last minute changes/bug fixes were implemented. the energy was high and the mood positive. throughout this busy time we've been pampered with home baked cookies and pies, starbucks coffee, jamba juice smoothies, and delicious lunches and dinners. the pats on the back and hearing "good work", "great job" are definitely added boosts. and just when it seems like i'm getting used to the long hours (i did over 80 hours last week!) and even working on weekends, my manager tells me today that our work days will probably go back to being 8 hours long now. that's almost hard to imagine :-P. i may even sleep in and get into work at 10am tomorrow ... instead of the usual 7am start. i finally get to see the sun again!! my manager also said he's giving us this friday off so we can all have a long weekend! woohoo! peter's suggesting he take the day off too and we go to vancouver for a couple days ... i'm sooooo up for that!! :-)

 

role reversal by.peter
wed.oct.25

Cristina has always been a morning person while I’ve always been a night owl. Even back in school and university I found that I was most productive when everyone else in my time zone was asleep. With Cristina working, I’ve had to make some minor adjustments. I no longer have the luxury of being woken up by the sun piercing through the blinds and shining on my face. In fact, it’s been a while since Cristina and I have seen the sun at all. I usually wake up to find Cristina playing with Lana at 6am. I can tell Cristina feels guilty for not having as much time with Lana as she'd like, but she didn't anticipate on having such a demanding work schedule.

It’s still early fall (autumn) but it’s already cold outside. Morning and evening temperatures have consistently fallen between 5-10 degrees Celsius. It’s a good thing the front seats of our car are heated because cold leather is as inviting as a cold toilet seat. The drive to work is often in rain or fog with bad traffic, but it isn’t so bad if you have someone to talk to during the drive. The other benefit of having a passenger is the ability to use the mostly empty carpool lanes ;).

During the day Cristina and I are both on Messenger. I’ll sometimes try to chat with her or I'll send her links to interesting sites or videos, but she’ll usually reply with a "babe, i'm busy right now" or "i have a meeting". Oh, how the roles have changed hehe.

With Cristina staying back so late at the office, I’ve been hanging out at a colleague’s place after work. It’s convenient because his apartment is only about 5 minutes drive from Cristina’s office. While I’m there, we'll usually do some network gaming until I get that call from Cristina that she's ready to be picked up. During the drive home, we try to work out what we would be doing for dinner but often end up choosing the sushi train in Issaquah. We like sushi because it’s fast, convenient and still pretty healthy. The chefs and waitresses there know us pretty well now and know what to serve us, even without us having to order anymore hehe.

When we get home it’s all about Lana. I’m usually the first one to greet Lana when we get home but as soon as I open the gate to her pen, she bolts out and looks around for Cristina. As soon as she sees Cristina you can see her wagging her tail, jumping up and down for Cristina’s attention. I try my best to get Lana's attention, often resorting to toys and treats but nothing will divert her attention from Mummy :).

 

Lana waiting patiently for a cuddle from Mummy....

 

all work, no play by.cristina
sun.oct.22

i worked 72 hours this week.

72.

including my saturday and sunday (ugh). i am soooooo tired. we have a major deadline next week to complete this multi-million dollar project for a very important client. our ceo will be presenting it and he expects it to be as flawless as possible. so i dragged myself into work this morning at 7am and most of the production team arrived a few hours later. our production manager thanked me today for all my hard work and he even congratulated me on being able to create something for them that will save them a significant amount of time, hassle and money. being thanked and appreciated is always nice. but right now, sleep is looking far better ...

 

a perfect saturday morning by.cristina
sat.oct.14

after a morning bath for lana, some playtime and then breakfast, peter suggested we take her for a morning walk. we considered taking her to a popular nearby off-leash dog park, but opted to wait after a few more walks before trying that. i don't know how game i'd be letting lana off her leash with all those other dogs around but we'll wait and see. we purchased some doggie boots for lana yesterday, but when we put them on her we discovered they were a size too big! ah well, i decided to just get a refund on them as she didn't seem too fond of them anyway. i guess dirty paws will just have to be accepted. but she did let me put a little yellow ribbon in her hair :-P. we chose to stay around our complex again for lana's walk, which has nice lanscaped gardens and plenty of neighbours to wave and say good morning to. the weather was a little chilly but lana's coat is quite thick so we didn't feel the need for a doggie coat just yet hehe. maybe when we start reaching below zero temperatures i'll get that beige doggie coat for her that i've been eyeing. oh the amusement cute little doggie outfits bring!! :-P

peter and i took turns walking her and whenever i held the leash, peter would run ahead of us and lana would run so fast after him (with me trying to keep up hehe). we were surprised at her endurance actually as it almost seemed like she could run for ages. i'm glad she's so fit ... i think the games of "fetch" up and down our hallway really helped :-).

then when we were nearing the half hour mark, lana suddenly just plonked down on the sidewalk, as if to say "ok i'm done" haha ...

needless to say, at this point we took the little princess home to rest :-P.

 

lana's first walk by.cristina
thu.oct.12

peter and i just got back from our first ever walk with lana :-). we decided her first walk should just be around our complex (which is quite big) and she was very inquisitive the whole way, but also very co-operative with the leash. the walk lasted about 15 minutes and she happily walked right next to us, never tugging at the leash, and whenever we ran, she ran right alongside us! peter and i really enjoyed walking her and we're definitely going to make it a daily thing. lana's paws got quite dirty during the walk (more obvious because of her white hair) so we're going to get her some doggie boots to avoid having to wash her paws daily hehe. it's amazing the variety of styles in clothes and accessories i find here for dogs :-). lana's sure going to be one fashionable puppy!

 

i'm 27! aaaaarrrggghhh by.cristina
tue.oct.10

I woke up this morning to find a present sitting outside our bedroom door with a card on it. the card read ...

"i thought of all the things I could give you that would say how much you mean to me but I couldn't think of anything that would come close. Then I realised the one thing I could give you that money couldn't buy - me! I thought about wrapping myself up for you but as you can see, I'm not even good at that! (actually his wrapping is getting much better hehe) So I decided to give you something that will allow me to give myself in another way - my absolute undivided attention and time!"

... and i open my present to find the "deluxe turntable scrabble" and "sequence" board games! yaaay! see, i absolutely love playing board games ... and so peter's choice of gift this year is the most touching yet because in the past, he's always bought me lavish gifts (like a camera, a watch, a phone and even a laptop). but this time he gave me something more precious ... a willingness to finally play board games with me haha. which is a big deal considering peter has never really liked playing board games (except for maybe chess). so after peter took me to "olive garden" in kirkland tonight for dinner, we headed home and he set up the scrabble game on our bed and played it with me! :-D.woohooo! (hmm, maybe for christmas i can get him to start playing tetris ;-).

some of my workmates took me out for a birthday lunch today at my favourite mexican restaurant in bellevue, "chipotle". and thankfully my project manager let me leave work at around 5:30pm today :-).

i also wanna say thanks to all the text messages, emails, instant messages, phonecalls and greeting cards i received from friends and family. you guys are all too sweet and i'm feeling especially loved today! and i want to say a big thanks to my hubby peter, who's thoughtfulness and sweetness is still unmatched (even after 11 years of being together). i had a great birthday!!

 

a new toy by.peter
mon.oct.9

Remember when Cristina said she was going to spoil me? She was definitely good for it! Today I became the proud owner of a new Dell Latitude D820 laptop :)

At Cristina's insistence, I put the order in last Monday via Dell's online store. I had already spent over a week researching the best laptop for my needs and finally spec'd up a Dell that was exactly what I wanted:

I actually considered buying an Apple MacBook Pro but an equivalently spec'd Mac would cost $1000 more with one less mouse button. MS employees also get discounts on both Dell and Apple products.

I was so excited about this laptop I've been tracking its delivery status online for the whole of last week. When I checked on Saturday morning, I noticed it had arrived in Redmond so I called UPS to see if I could pick it up personally...no luck...it wasn't part of their policy. Today I waited for the internal couriers to deliver the package, which I had expected to arrive early in the morning. By lunch time when it hadn't arrived, I called the MS mail processing center and was told it was being processed and would likely be delivered tomorrow. I couldn't wait another day so I decided to drive down to Building 123 and personally pick up the package :)

So here I am, writing the first entry with my new laptop. I am even more appreciative of this laptop because it represents the hard work Cristina has put in over the past few weeks with her new job. I can't believe she put in 60 hours of work last week! That's more than I've ever done in a single week. Every time I use this laptop I'll definitely think of all the sweat she's put into it!

 

late nights by.cristina
thu.oct.5

my work colleague, vernard (who's also filipino), and i were the last ones to leave the office tonight at around 10pm. i had been at the office since 7:30am this morning and my day was full-on from the get go (like pretty much every day heh). i have another deadline tomorrow and i gotta meet it!! (i made the last one :-)

peter normally finishes work at 6pm so he and some of his work colleagues got together for dinner and some game-play, after which he picked me up from my office. we headed home to find, as usual, a little fluffball eagerly awaiting our arrival. coming home to lana feels wonderful. it's amazing how merely holding her relaxes me so much. she's so forgiving of our absence during the weekdays. but for most of the weekend she gets our undivided attention and she rakes it in! we recently took her to the vet to have her last set of vaccinations and i'm counting down the days until it's finally safe to take her out for walks (10 days after her 16 week vaccination, according to her vet). only 6 days to go! not long now ... :-)

 

cheddar comin! by.cristina
mon.oct.2

i never would have guessed that last week's 50+hour work week would have been so easy for me to do - but it was (of course it helps that i'm a contractor and get paid for every hour i work hehe). i think the fact that i like my colleagues a lot makes the long hours almost fly by, and our lunches/breaks together are little boosts throughout my day. a definite boost was getting my first paycheck today! woohoo! $-D ... and i know exactly what i want to do with my first month's pay too! ;-). peter's spoiled me for as long as i can remember and now it's my turn to spoil him a little! ;-) stay tuned ...

oh and to address the question some of you are asking - what does my position at work entail exactly - i'll mention the responsibilities that were listed on the job ad hehe (easier than trying to explain things myself) ...

so yeah, that about sums it up :-).

 

a little piece of corvu by.peter
mon.oct.2

After I left CorVu, I had 90 days to exercise the stock options I had accumulated over the years. Given the amount of time I had been with CorVu, all my options had vested and were exercisable. Unfortunately, many were issued towards the end of the dotcom era and so were overpriced. Nevertheless, I still had a significant amount that was good so I exercised the options by wiring the funds across to CorVu’s Minneapolis headquarters…just before the 90 day expiration. So for a brief moment I owned a little piece of CorVu (a whole 0.04%) and I felt compelled to instant message my former team to nag them to work harder. Yes, I can be that demanding even when I’m gone.

Anyway, I finally decided owning a company was just too much work and sold off all my CorVu shares on Friday. Cha-ching!!

 

skirmish by.peter
sun.oct.1

Our team organized another event last Monday. We had voted for paintball and one of our PMs (program managers) picked out a location about 50 minutes south of Redmond. I used the term ‘skirmish’ on several occasions, but it only drew blank faces and nods as if to apologize for my ignorance of local terminology. I knew they were thinking 'it must be one of those Aussie words'. Anyway, unlike paintball venues in Sydney I was used to, this place did not provide clothing so we had to come prepared. The team met at about 11am to organize transport to the venue. It turns out that of the 17 of us going to this event, only 3 or 4 of us had actually done paintball before. At first I thought this was weird and felt a little privileged, but then I realized a few of the others had actually used a real gun before. One guy also served in some eastern European (Polish, I think) army for a short while. Having done skirmish a number of times before, I was prepared and arrived clad in my tracksuit and thick jacket. My jacket was so thick it was practically paintball kevlar – I could take a direct hit and not feel it at all. A few of my team mates who turned up in t-shirts and jeans came to me and asked ‘so does it hurt?’ I pointed out my jacket and smiled.

The venue was a little disappointing though, there was only one field and it was barely half the size of an olympic pool. There were obstacles positioned throughout the field but they were all inflatables. Maybe the owners were afraid that in our excitement of trying to shoot each other with semi-automatic paintball guns we might trip and hurt ourselves. The venue wasn’t great but the opportunity to shoot your team manager and testers was a nice consolation. Now that’s team bonding.

Just an interesting observation: I think paintball guns are illegal in Australia or require some special license. Not in the great US of A though You will find paintball guns in sporting goods next to BB guns and fishing rods at your local Fred Meyer (think Target with groceries).